


Sketches

by stardropdream



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Implied Sexual Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:01:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3627549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Have a good day!” Aramis calls after him, hating to see him leave without even saying a word.  Porthos doesn’t answer, but he does wave over his shoulder to acknowledge that Aramis spoke to him – and Aramis smiles to himself and returns to his sketch-pad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sketches

**Author's Note:**

> I could never fully turn this into a full-fledged story, so instead it's basically just a collection of vignettes. Based off a prompt of Aramis being an artist and being very ♥ about Porthos and wanting to draw him all the time. 
> 
> And/or, the fic that reveals just how little I know about anything art-related so idk why I took up this prompt.

**I.**  
Aramis sits out on the veranda today, not bothering with the easel. The studio was getting stuffy in the early afternoon son, filtering in direct through the skylights. It’s still a little warm out on the porch, but it’s a pleasant sort of heat – certainly better than winter – and Aramis hums out a bit as his pencil slides down across the notebook in his lap. He sketches absently, whatever catches his eye – never lingering for long. A lopsided tree in the front yard, a mother and child passing down the street hand in hand, a bird – although that one he abandons quickly, as the chirping begins to irritate him enough that he’d rather shoo it along than try to get its stupid beady little eyes right. 

The door opens and shuts behind him and when he twists around, Porthos steps out a bit onto the veranda, towards the front steps. He nods in greeting to Aramis but is apparently running late – as he doesn’t pause to talk and flirt with Aramis as he has done ever since Aramis moved into the apartment complex. Aramis watches him go, watches the way he moves – swift, but still filling up space, at once graceful and yet barreling. 

“Have a good day!” Aramis calls after him, hating to see him leave without even saying a word. Porthos doesn’t answer, but he does wave over his shoulder to acknowledge that Aramis spoke to him – and Aramis smiles to himself. 

He looks down at his sketchpad once Porthos turns the corner down the street. A vague sketch of a man running, caught in motion forever. 

 

 **II.**  
Adele sighs and stretches out her back, arching slightly as she massages at sore muscles at the base of her shoulder blades. Aramis watches her and they’re both supposed to be taking a break from Aramis’ painting, but she’s mesmerizing – always has been. She’s always been one of his favorite models, if only because of her interesting angles, her smiling eyes, the way she moves with hardly any direction when Aramis asks her to hold still. 

That, and she’s a very good kisser. But that’s just a happy bonus when it comes to art. Aramis sets down his brush and walks over towards her. She laughs at him, since the look in his eye must be clear, and tips her chin up.

“I’m not meant to move too much,” she warns him, but he merely cups her cheeks and kisses her – slow and sweet, savoring. The room smells too much like a studio – the tang of paint and the crisp assault of charcoal, but she, at least, is beautiful. 

When he draws back, she’s smiling and hums a bit. 

“I’ll get you some water,” Aramis says, stepping back with what he knows is a stupid grin. He leaves the back room of his apartment he uses as a studio and steps out into the main room. He’s left the front door open to let in some air – something that Adele always scoffs at with her mock scandal (“What happens if someone were to walk in and see me in such a state of undress?”) but Aramis always delights in. There’s something risqué about keeping the door open, really, while a beautiful woman stretches out on his couch. 

He draws a large glass of water for Adele in time to glance at the front door and watch Porthos pass by. Aramis nearly drops the cup he’s so surprised, and he’s moving without quite realizing until he has one hand hooked on the doorframe and he’s curling out into the hallway, leaning. It’d be just his luck if the doorframe snapped out from beneath his hand, but for now it holds his weight

“Hey, stranger,” he calls. 

Porthos pauses, looking back over his shoulder. It’s worth it for the way Porthos’ smile blooms across his face – and _god_ it really isn’t fair that Porthos is so handsome. He’s looking disheveled, tired. He must have just gotten off shift for his work. 

“Hey,” he says, and backtracks. He leans against the wall outside Aramis’ door, mimicking his posture, and his smile is wide and sincere – and Aramis is no fool. Porthos asks, “What are you up to?”

“A new series,” Aramis says and lifts up his hands, wriggling his fingers so Porthos can get a good look at the paint stained across his palms. 

Porthos nods, surprisingly solemn – for all of Aramis’ own teasing of his work, Porthos has only ever taken it with utter seriousness. Aramis can recall the first time that Porthos had caught sight of a particularly stupid drawing of a squirrel, and he’d been stupidly impressed, hitching his hips up so he could sit on the railing to the veranda and drill Aramis about art questions for the entire afternoon – the type of paper he likes, the schooling he’s had, his favorite style of paint. Now, too, Porthos takes Aramis’ thoughtless comment as something overly thoughtful, something worthy of his entire attention and approval. Aramis has to laugh, and something eases in Porthos’ shoulders, and he soon smiles as well. 

“What’s it about?” Porthos asks, with the kind of edge to his voice that means he wouldn’t mind if Aramis didn’t want to answer. 

Aramis has never been cagey – although perhaps self-deprecating where some of his work falters – but he adores praise, and so he tells Porthos easily about the idea. It basically boils down to the celebration of the feminine, and while some might scoff at the pretentiousness, Porthos just chews thoughtfully on his bottom lip. And _that_ is utterly distracting. 

Eventually he spends too long speaking with Porthos because Adele swans out from the studio, draped in a silk robe and tutting loudly enough to break Aramis away from staring at Porthos’ mouth. 

“While we’re still young and beautiful, Aramis,” she reminds him, but seems more amused than anything, if impatient. She pushes her hair back from over her shoulder and tilts her chin down in an unquestionably _come over here_ gesture. 

Aramis turns back to Porthos, who merely lifts his eyebrows a few times and says, “You better listen to her.” 

Aramis waffles for half a moment – almost invites Porthos inside to watch – and then thinks better of it. He’s no fool – and he’d know that smile of Porthos’ if he were drunk and blind, but he also knows better than to rush it. 

So he says goodbye with a wide smile and a sigh of, “Duty calls.” 

 

 **III.**  
“It’s funny,” Aramis says as he watches Porthos dig into his pocket for his key. “We’ve lived next door to each other for a few months now and yet I still know so little about you.”

Aside from that Porthos is gorgeous, that there’s a deep kind of sadness that still peeks out through his smiling eyes, that he’s strong and works in some kind of security or something with strange hours, that he absolutely loves to hear about art, and that Porthos likes him, too. That much, at least, he is sure – he’s spent his whole life being attractive to people and he knows the signs. 

Porthos manages to fish out his key and turns to give Aramis his undivided attention. There’s a bag of groceries at his feet and he looks tired, but happy to see Aramis. Aramis smiles back. 

“What’s there to know?”

“Now don’t play coy,” Aramis tuts, “it really doesn’t suit you.”

He swings out of his room and shuts the door behind him, making his way over towards Porthos and leaning against his doorframe, watching Porthos’ fingers curl and uncurl around his key.

“Are you going to invite me in for drinks? I see that wine in your bag – and there’s no better way to get to know someone.”

“What, by getting them drunk?” Porthos laughs.

“No,” Aramis says, then amends, “Well it doesn’t hurt. I meant, let me make you something to eat.” 

“Are you going to leave me the dishes, too?” Porthos snorts, opening his door and stooping to pick up his bags of groceries. He leaves the door open, though, so Aramis follows him in. His apartment has essentially the same layout as Aramis’ own, and so it isn’t too difficult to find the kitchen even if Porthos wasn’t making his way there himself. 

Aramis makes him food and Porthos pours the wine, and they spend hours just talking – a first in a long time for Aramis, although his fingers itch to do something other than clutch at the stem of the wineglass. He watches Porthos’ face move – smiles and laughs, pursing his lips in thought over a puzzling question, rolling his eyes and biting his lip. He’s utterly distracting. 

It’s late into the evening – well into the morning, really, when Aramis finally tips his head and says, “Well? Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

And Porthos laughs – bright and surprised, but happy. “Was just waiting on you.”

And then he cups Aramis’ face, like it’s simple, and kisses him.

 

 **IV.**  
“You should let me paint you,” Aramis says a few weeks on, and Porthos glances up at him from where he’s kissing over his shoulder. 

“What?” he asks, and then laughs – thinking that Aramis is joking. 

“I mean it,” Aramis insists, twisting around so he can cup Porthos’ face, studying him carefully. “You’re beautiful.”

“Or a waste of charcoal,” Porthos says, and it’s a tease more than any self-consciousness, because if there was ever someone who knew he was handsome, it’s Porthos. 

Aramis hooks his leg around Porthos’ hip and pushes himself up so he’s straddling him, pressing Porthos down onto his back. He leans in and kisses him – heavy and drunk on his taste. When he draws back, though, he continues to study Porthos’ face, memorizes the slump of his nose, the curve of his jaw, the slight quirk of his lips as he looks at Aramis in a mixture of wonder and amusement. 

“Well,” Porthos says, and there’s that glint to his eyes that means he’s thought of it before, that he’s almost asked, and yet hasn’t. “If you wanted.”

“I do,” Aramis says, skidding his fingers over Porthos’ cheeks. “I’d draw you a hundred times over.”

“How romantic,” Porthos laughs, and pulls Aramis down to kiss him. 

 

 **V.**  
He can never get Porthos just right. The first few sketches lack his warmth and his kindness. The next are too sad and severe. The ones after that aren’t gentle enough, too stark and withdrawn. 

There are a few charcoal sketches of Porthos in different states of undress, different looks and different poses – and each one doesn’t look like him. Aramis wonders if he’s perhaps too close, too invested. The ones of him completely naked are all unfinished simply because Aramis’ resistance is ridiculously nonexistent when it comes to Porthos lounging on his couch and just _asking_ for Aramis to come over and lick his clavicle, or his belly button, or, well – other things. 

He’s even started one watercolor, started one afternoon when Porthos sits at the window, sun in his hair, reading a book on art history that Aramis long since forgot he owned. (Porthos admits to Aramis one afternoon that he’d always wanted to learn to draw and never really got the chance – even risked showing Aramis a few drawings he’d attempted to do, all juvenile and unskilled but catching Aramis’ heart into his throat better than any modern master ever could.) 

Now, Aramis just crumbles up another failed drawing – the eyes, all wrong, too severe and distant, not nearly warm enough. 

“You are an enigma, my friend,” Aramis says, pouting, because it’s been a long time since he hasn’t been able to tame a face. Porthos leans down over Aramis’ shoulder and examining the drawings. He says nothing of their accuracy or Aramis’ skills. Instead, he just kisses his temple, lingering close. 

“You’ve got plenty of time to practice,” he says, and Aramis shivers at such an unspoken promise, and leans back against Porthos.

**Author's Note:**

> [Muh Tumblr](http://stardropdream.tumblr.com/), so exciting.


End file.
